


from new york to l.a.

by trickydoll



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Jealousy, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Underage Drinking, also pete and joe are roommates and patrick is roommates with an oc, also rating will change probably, but its like not creepy or w/e, ill add more tags later bye, im not adding petekey as a relationship bc it hardly will be one but like, internet friends au!, its not romantic, not for long, patrick is a college student, pete is a youtuber, the summary is in second person pov but i promise the fic is third person pov omjhsdhk, theres a little petekey in here at one point, they both make music, this is about to be long and itll break ur heart but also
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 03:25:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13515648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickydoll/pseuds/trickydoll
Summary: Imagine this: You idolize someone. They're everything you want to be.One day you're watching them through a screen...and the next they're your best friend.It's a little overwhelming sometimes, especially when it comes to the 2000 miles between you. And maybe you don't always just mean that in terms of physical distance.





	1. a step out of the comfort zone

**Author's Note:**

> whaddup im about to post two chaptered fics because im a heathen  
> these fics are my baby im so ready for yall to see whats gonna happen in this one  
> i know the summary isnt that great but basically pete is a youtuber patrick rlly likes and he posts a cover of his song, they become friends, and then you get pining and angst   
> :"D ill update this as often as i can as long as my gc reminds me that i have fic obligations   
> anyway this note is a mess im just gonna let u read my fic UWU

 

Patrick is sitting in front of his laptop, scrubbing the heels of his hands so roughly into his eyes he swears they’re raw, when he hears his phone  _ ping  _ with a notif. He spins slowly in the office chair he’s currently perched up in like a child, eyeing his phone with a pointed glare. He snatches it off the desk with much more force than necessary, but he’s annoyed dammit. Everyone who has his number should know he’s beyond neck deep in studies right now, and he can hardly focus as it is. The last thing he needs is someone to enable him to have a reason to distract himself.

 

He jams the home button with his thumb, squinting down at the tiny and bright little screen to see which friend or family member he has to rip a new one, only to soften when he sees the notification demanding his attention. 

 

**_New video from Pete Wentz!:_ ** **_Announcements and other cool stuff!_ **

 

Patrick’s whole demeanor changes. His eyes squint up behind his glasses as a huge grin breaks across his face, and he suppresses a giddy laugh. He’s not a schoolgirl, dammit. He places his phone back on the desk, and spins his body to face his laptop again. He minimizes the millions of tabs of unfinished essays and reference material, and instead immediately opens up the browser. His fingers are a rapid blur across the keyboard as he types up the URL that’d become engraved into his memory a good two years ago. 

 

The page loads up and in front of him in all it’s 146 video glory is his favorite Youtuber’s, Pete Wentz, channel. 

 

There in the 146th video slot, like a godsend to Patrick’s overworked brain, is the promised  _ Announcements and other cool stuff!  _ video. He clicks on it without another moment of hesitation, and settles into the uncomfortable and worn leather of his chair. He smiles the whole way through as Pete talks about a whole litany of new music he and Joe- the singer of his little two man band -are planning to release soon, alongside plans for a possible mini-tour to the cities around them due to the spike of fans they’d gotten in the last year. 

 

It ends with a signature wink and Pete sticking his tongue out like the heathen he is, and Patrick feels like he’s a million times lighter.  

 

Pete Wentz was a songwriter. He wrote lyrics and put together music with Joe that they began to share with the public on Youtube some four years ago….and Patrick? Well, he was a sucker for them. He’d stumbled across them two and a half years ago in the suggestions bar of some covers he was listening to. It wasn’t so much the ridiculously long song title that had caught his attention as much as it was Pete with his stupidly perfect smile and stupidly perfect- everything. But, it was the music that made him stay. 

 

Pete wrote some deep shit for a guy who seemed so carefree. Sometimes it hit Patrick so hard he’d lay awake at night and wonder what was going on behind the scenes with the man. He’d come to idolize him so much, what with how he was living Patrick’s dream of creating music with good lyrics and having the guts to put it out there, that he often felt closer to the man than he truly was. Pete was a B-list _ celebrity,  _ though. Patrick stood no chance in ever being anything but a fan to him. 

 

_...That _ and the fact that Pete is all the way out in fame-for-sale L.A., and Patrick is a broke college student in New York.

 

Patrick’s brain is buzzing with a clusterfuck of thoughts and not a single one of them has to do with his ever forgotten schoolwork. So much for needing to stay on task. He backs out of the announcements video, and instead plays the latest song that Pete and Joe had released. If he’s honest, it’s one of his favorites. 

 

The beat starts, the guitar and bass making Patrick’s whole body feel warm with the happy familiarity of it. He slides himself away from his desk, rolling his chair over to his keyboard. He taps his fingers to the tempo of the song, where Joe’s voice is now coming from behind him, and then starts thumbing the notes on his keyboard that fit perfectly in sync with it all. The song comes to an end, and Patrick is pleased with himself. He’d conjured up the notes to fit the song on his keyboard the moment he’d heard it for the sole purpose of making a daring move on his part- covering the song and posting it online. 

 

The idea made him tick with anxiety, but he figured it’d be a good start for him. Besides, if he expected to ever have his own career in music and do something with this degree he was working his ass off for, he had to get over this persistent self consciousness in everything he did alongside the way he looked. His looks be damned, though, Patrick knew he could compose music. Everyone would just have to get over the fact that he wasn’t the muscular and golden Pete Wentz and instead was awkward, pudgy, teenage Patrick Stump.

 

He yawns after managing to play through the song one more time, checking the time to find it nearing 2 am, and decides to call it a night. He didn’t have a single lecture scheduled for tomorrow, so he’d make sure to be up as early as he could manage to lay down a simple drum beat to go alongside his piano and his vocals. Patrick bites his tongue. He doesn’t believe in his voice too much, but he hopes whoever sees his video will look past that and realize he composed a great cover of Pete and Joe’s song. 

 

He yawns again, tears pricking his eyes, and he slips his glasses off.

 

Tomorrow, though. Sleep was calling him now. 

 

\--

 

The camera feels like it’s glaring at him. Patrick nearly breaks a sweat. 

 

He’s just gotten everything into place. His room is cleaned up, he’s recorded and dealt with the drum beat, and he’s set up the camera in front of his keyboard- placed in the middle of his room so that the boringly white wall behind him can serve as a backdrop. Now all he has to do is actually sit at it, play it, and…. sing. The camera glares harder. Patrick nearly shreds his bottom lip with his teeth. 

 

He sits behind the keyboard in his less than presentable office chair, and moves his hands to hover above the keys. He takes a breather- _ in, count to seven, out, count to seven. _ He doesn’t bother with an intro, he just lets instinct take over as his fingertips began to dance gently over the worn keys. He inhales, albeit a bit shaky, and the begins to sing. He closes his eyes, trying to forget the fact that there’s even something recording him sitting in front of him. He just loses himself to the music- the vibration of his voice and the reverberating piano in his whole body, the story behind every word that pours from his lips, and the feeling every bit of it combined settling in the pit of his chest. It’s over faster than he expected, the last high note ringing out alongside his voice, and then the room is silent again. Patrick looks up from under his hat, cheeks turning pink, and he just nods. 

 

He shuffles out from behind his keyboard to turn the camera off. He’s panting very gently, from nerves and from singing at the top of his lungs, but he almost feels accomplished. He sets the camera on his desk, and replaces the keyboard to it’s corner before settling into the rolling chair. He slides it right up to his laptop. He spends the next hour editing the whole video together, trying to ignore the voice gnawing at him insisting that everything was wrong,  _ wrong, wrong _ \- 

 

Next thing he knows, he’s hit upload, and it’s out there for anyone to see. 

 

Patrick Stump’s cover of a Pete and Joe song. 

 

He slams his laptop shut before he can let the little garbage can icon tempt him any more. 

 

\--

 

“I don’t know where this notion that you can’t sing comes from, you know. You really can!”

 

“You’re biased, Chloe.” 

 

The girl, Chloe, pouts as she leans in to bitterly sip at her milkshake. 

 

Chloe Adams was Patrick’s best friend and roommate. A petite little brunette with an attitude that didn’t fit her body. She was far busier than he was with classes and a job, so she was hardly ever at the actual apartment aside from when she needed to sleep, but that didn’t mean she still couldn’t make time for him. He appreciated her more than he could ever possibly convey. They were currently sitting across from each other during their weekly splurge on a meal that wasn’t something you microwaved on a plate for two minutes, and Patrick was trying his best to contain his radiating anxiety over his cover video. 

 

It’d only been up for twelve hours, and he’d promptly ignored it since, but Chloe was insisting the feedback had been insanely positive thus far. It didn’t rack up millions of views overnight or anything, but he had managed to get a few hundred and some comments. A good start. 

 

“A majority of these strangers say so, too. Like, seriously, I think there’s maybe two comments about the actual music part. Everyone else is nuts for your range, Patty!”

 

Patrick cringes as he swallows a fry, “Don’t call me that.”

 

Chloe deadpans, speaking slowly as if Patrick only barely knew English, “Do the words that come from my mouth reach your ears? Or only the parts you dislike?”

 

Patrick looks away, pursing his lips. Chloe borderline growls. 

 

“I’m not kidding! You did this to benefit yourself and your future! So pay attention to it! People like you. You clearly have a chance in something other than just  _ composing  _ the music for stuff… you could  _ sing it _ , too, Patrick.” She snatches on of his fries, biting down into it so angrily that Patrick is afraid his head is next. 

 

“Fine,” he caves, “I will consider what other people are saying, but I like making music. It’s not like I’d die if my future was composing alone. I never had some hidden dream to be a singer.”

 

Chloe seems to accept this answer, “Give it a week, and I bet you’ll really be blowing up by then!” She smiles to herself, sucking idly at her straw before her eyes widen and she swallows so quick, Patrick is afraid she’ll choke. “Oh my god!”

 

Patrick jolts, holding his hands up in defense as she stands, slamming her hands on the table. She gets into his face with that bewildered look, and Patrick is sure she’s snapped and he’s going to have to get her tranquilized. Her hand comes up and under his chin, squeezing his cheeks together.

 

“I’m going to tweet the link to Pete and Joe. If they saw it and liked it and said something about it, you’d--”

 

Now it’s Patrick’s turn to spill his marbles. He whacks her hand away, standing up himself- not that it does much, considering his height has never been friendly to him, so now they just see eye to eye -and presses in so close that their noses almost touch. “Do not.”

 

“Yes. I’m going to get all my friends to do it, too.”

 

Patrick seriously doubts that a couple of people tweeting a meaningless link to Pete is going to grab his attention- let alone Joe, who’s never even online -when he gets hundreds of replies and dumb tweets daily. However, he really doesn’t need her heightening the possibility. Especially when he’s already used up every ounce of his courage to even add their names into the title of the public video in the first place. They have  _ enough _ of a chance of seeing it. 

 

Patrick likes the chance where it is, at 0.05%. Chloe doesn’t need to make it 0.08%. 

 

“Chloe.”

 

“Patrick. Imagine if your idol saw your amazing cover of his song. Singing aside, you composed a nice piano piece of it, right?”

 

_ Shit _ . She knows the words to use to soften him up. 

 

Patrick bites his lip. He supposes Pete seeing that video wouldn’t be so bad. So long as he focused on the music and not Patrick’s dumb looking face. Oh damn it all to hell.

 

“Okay,” he gives in for the second time. Damn this girl and her persuasion. “But I doubt he’ll see it. And even if he does, there are tons of other covers of their music. I’m sure it’ll just get brushed under the rug after one watch through.”

 

Chloe smirks, sitting back down all delicately as if she were a doll and not a hellspawn, “Whatever you say, Patty.”

 

Patrick flops back down with absolutely no finesse, his thoughts swarming with pipe dreams of what could happen in his dream world where Pete saw his cover and flew to New York to steal him away. He furrows his brows, nearly physically swatting away the daydream.

 

“I said don’t call me that.”

 

\--

 

Patrick watches over Chloe’s shoulder with uncertainty as her fingers dashed across the tiny little phone keyboard with ease. 

 

He didn’t even bother trying to breathe until after she hit the blue send button for the third time in a row now, and finally put her phone off to the side. He sighed deeply, setting himself heavily onto her bed. She whipped around in her computer chair to fix him with a smug look, “You’re a drama queen who needs to learn personal space.”

 

Patrick’s eyes widen a inch before slanting into a glare. “You’re one to talk.”

 

Chloe giggles all cutely- seriously, Patrick needed her to stop acting like the angel she definitely was not- and pats his cheek gently, “Whatever. It’s not that big of a deal.”

 

He knew she wasn’t talking about personal space but rather the three simple tweets she’d just sent off- each containing the handle of his idol and the link to his cover. (He’d make Chloe promise to only send it so many times _ and _ she had to let him watch her. Just to make sure. Left to her own advices, she’d spam the poor man.) 

 

“But it is to me.”

 

Patrick hadn’t realized how nerve wracking this was to him until he spoke. There was an uncertain waver in his voice that all stemmed from the fact that he had never believed in himself all that much. It was a huge thing for him to post a cover online that actually showcased his face (from what showed anyway- his hat did a good job shadowing him away from judging eyes) and voice. Said video having exposure in the form of a tweet to his idol was… almost too much. 

 

Chloe softens up at his tone, standing from where she was sat her her desk to plop down next to Patrick on her bed. She rubs a comforting hand up and down his arm, smiling ever so faintly, “Hey, it’s okay. I know you don’t believe it, but you’re amazing. The worst thing that can happen is he ignores it, but everyone else? They love you already. Me included.”

 

Patrick let’s out a genuine chuckle, knocking his shoulder against Chloe’s, “Thanks.”

 

“No problem,” she smirks all over again, “the wait begins now though…”

 

Patrick swallows hard and Chloe springs back up to her feet again.

 

“Pete Wentz has received a link to the amazing Patrick Stump’s cover of his song and there’s no going back!”

  
  



	2. and a step into the danger zone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? already posting a new chapter? yes  
> writing is the only thing thats making me sane right now  
> i appreciate everyone who already likes this mess a ton  
> also i forgot to say this but i dont have a beta or a proofreader so sorry if there are grammar mistakes and/or typos love me

“Mother _ fucker!” _

 

There’s a clatter of a controller hitting the ground followed by a loud thud, and all Pete can do is sigh. He pushes himself away from the kitchen table with an ear shattering  _ screech _ from the wooden chair, and tiredly drags himself into the living room. 

 

Just as he’d expected, Joe is laying across the floor, spread eagle, a glaring red  _ DEFEAT  _ flashing across the television screen. He peeks one tired blue eye open to look up at the body now hovering him. A lazy smile spreads across his face, “Wanna join me?” 

 

The offer gets completely ignored. “I’m, like, trying to work in there, and every time you shout like a little girl, I almost bite my own tongue off. Can you either hush or help me?” 

 

Joe’s purses his lips as if he’s thinking when Pete knows he’s really just trying to find a way to say ‘ _ I’m so tired of looking at venues and/or sheet music right now.’  _ without actually saying it. And it’s not like Pete doesn’t feel that entirely, but someone has to get all this shit together. The brunette sits himself up and mimes locking his lips up with a zip and key before he turns back to the game at hand. 

 

Pete feels a brand new wave of exhaustion hit him, but at least for a good ten minutes, he knows his roommate will  _ try  _ to shut the  _ fuck up. _ He shuffles back into the kitchen, flopping down into his chair again with a long, long exhale. 

 

He manages to get back into the swing of things for a good five minutes before it feels like the letters and numbers on the screen are all blurring into one mass of nothingness and the white background is eating his eyes away. This is when Pete decides a break is well deserved. He saves all his work, jotting down a phone number or two, before closing the tabs. 

 

His body melts into the uncomfortable and rickety wooden dining room chair, and he takes a moment to just close his eyes. He has that same image of the numbers and letters all mangled into what started feeling like a foreign language burned into his retinas and it’s projecting against the back of his eyelids like a haunting nightmare. Bloodshot and brown eyes snap back open, and he leans forward to shut his laptop. It was late enough to call it a night. 

 

Pete snatches a granola bar to munch on, focusing down on his phone and the texts he’d been forgetting to check for the past few hours while he sways back into the living room. Joe is still sat in the middle of the floor like a child, his thumbs flicking the joysticks and buttons of the controller so harshly that Pete actually starts to understand why he has to buy a new one monthly. 

 

His attention flickers back and forth between the tv and his phone for awhile before Joe decides to lose his mind again and shout obscenities at the enemy team as if they care or could hear him at all. 

 

Pete snaps a photo of him arguing with a pointed finger with their literal  _ television, _ and opens Twitter to give their followers a little update on the daily shenanigans in the Pete and Joe household. He types out the tweet, attaches the photo, and hits send. 

 

It only takes a moment for replies to start pouring in. 

 

Pete smiles warmly, tapping the bell to sort through the responses and see what actually held enough sense to be replied to and wasn’t just  _ ‘AJSKDJSK’  _ and other variants. He sticks the last bit of his granola bar into his mouth as he replies to someone about when their next song will come out, and when he goes back into his notifs, there, all lined up and perfect, are about nine replies holding the same link. It catches his attention because they line up perfectly in the mess of his replies, but they’re from three different people, and none of them have context aside from  _ ‘watch this, you won’t regret it!’.  _

 

Pete hovers the link for a moment, skeptical about it. He’d been sent some weird shit in the form of innocent looking YouTube links. However, as always, his curiosity wins him over and he taps on it. 

 

The page takes a moment to load, as Joe’s game absolutely destroys anyone else’s chances of having fast WiFi in this house, before his phone redirects him to the YouTube app. 

 

_ Huh. A cover. _

 

He could handle that. He’d seen a decent amount of fans covering their music. He enjoyed them, it made him feel special to know someone knew all the words to their songs and wanted to show their support through their own talent. 

 

He digs a pair of headphones out from the couch cushions- they always ended up their because Joe was horrible about not paying attention to where he tossed things- and placed one earphone in after they’re plugged up to his phone. 

 

He presses play and expects a girl to appear on the screen and start rambling about how much Pete and Joe meant to her before belting out an acapella version of their stuff— instead he gets no intro and a boy who looks no older than  _ sixteen _ sitting in front of a piano with a red face shielded by a trucker hat.

 

Pete is intrigued. 

 

The piano starts, a subtle drum beat kicking in the background, and Pete smiles. It sounds good. He could only imagine how it would sound alongside the guitar it was originally played with. He idly wonders if it’s just a piano rendition of their latest song, and then the boy parts his lips– pink, full,  _ distracting – _ and sings. 

 

Pete has to stop himself from choking on the sharp gasp that involuntarily comes from his throat.

 

He’s  _ good _ . He’s  _ really fucking good _ . 

 

Pete watches all the way through the video with saucer eyes and mouth agape as the boy seems to lose himself to the music, belting out high note after low note with a voice to die for. He’s an angel, Pete decides, with a soulful voice and a baby face attached. 

 

The cover comes to an end with a shy nod from the boy as he pulls the lid of his hat down to shadow him away from view again. Pete has to stare at the black screen for thirty seconds before he finds his words.

 

“Joe- I- you- This kid-“

 

Okay, so maybe he can’t find his words just yet.

 

Joe turns to him with a quirk of his brow for a split second before he has to snap his attention back to the game, “Dude- what? You’re flapping like a fish right now.” 

 

“You...you have to watch this cover I was just sent.”

 

—

 

Patrick blinks slowly, his eyes begging to be shut and left shut for a nice eight hours of sleep, but he has things to do. 

 

Yes… things to do. That’s why he’s currently sitting here and combing through the comments on his cover video.

 

It’s been up for a total of three days and the views are only continuing to climb. He’s proud of himself finally for doing it, but he won’t lie and say he’s not just a little upset one of those views isn’t from his idol. Or that they could be and he just didn’t think he was good enough— 

 

Patrick shakes his head. He needed to focus on all the other people who liked him. Their opinions mattered, too. 

 

The time ticks over to 3:45am. Patrick head nods, his eyes flutter– his phone violently vibrates with a clatter against his desk. The blonde shoots straight back up with a jolt, and an annoyed huff. His fingers snake over and snatch his phone up, turning it over to check the notif that decided to shake him to his very core.

 

Oh. It was a new tweet from Pete. 

 

That familiar happiness washes over him just as it always did, like a warm blanket, and he slides his phone open. The post consists of a photo of Joe, pointing an accusing finger at a TV screen that the camera quality couldn’t pick up the contents of, all captioned off with  _ ‘he does know they can’t hear him right? _ ’. He gives the tweet a like, giving a little scroll down into the replies when his face pales.

 

_ Fucking Chloe.  _

 

He sees her irritatingly happy face smiling back at him in the form of her profile picture, and that same cursed link he was  _ sure  _ they agreed she wouldn’t send more than  _ three times _ –

 

Oh fuck. There’s two other people he doesn’t recognize tweeting the same link. 

 

**_Fucking. Chloe_ ** **.**

 

He places his phone back down with an exasperated sigh. No big deal. It’s not like Pete had noticed before, and Chloe was bound to give up on this sooner or later. Patrick decides to actually go back to his essay that was supposed to be done about six hours ago, and actually manages to lose himself to the boring lull of typing up some nonsense that would at least pass him. He’s just about done, ready to hit save and dive into the wonderful comfort of his bed when he hears a blood curdling shriek from across the hall.

 

“Sh- _ Shit–“  _ he stumbles over himself like the awkward and clumsy fuck he is trying to dart up and out of his office chair to go make sure Chloe is  _ not being murdered or something _ and manages face first into the floor alongside his chair tumbling over onto his legs. 

 

Before he even has the chance to collect himself, Chloe bursts into the room, his door hitting the wall  _ way too hard,  _ and holds her phone out to him with a shaking hand. 

 

Patrick kicks his chair away, sits himself up, and pushes his glasses back up his nose so he can squint at the phone now nearly pressed to his face. It’s a direct message on twitter. 

 

“Chloe, what-“

  
  
  


His eyes focus.

  
  
  


His heart stops.

  
  


_ @ _ **_petewentz_ ** _ : hey! can i get the @ of that dude in the cover maybe? :) _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll probably pump out another chapter in the next day or so if my mental state can just like Chill

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter @smileywentz


End file.
